UBS Las Vegas Broker Producing $1.5 Million Joins RIA

A UBS Wealth Management USA broker in Las Vegas who produced about $1.5 million in trailing-12-month revenue jumped on the eve of the long Labor Day weekend to a registered investment advisory firm.

Kimberly Parker-Hansen, who spent almost half of her 23-year career as an independent broker before joining Morgan Stanley in 2008, said she joined Rubicon Advisors, a hybrid RIA in Redding and Roseville, Calif. that also functions as an office of supervisory jurisdiction for LPL Financial.

“I wanted to be an entrepreneur,” Parker-Hansen said, hours after leaving UBS on Thursday.

Parker-Hansen, who began her brokerage career in 1996 with LPL predecessor Linsco/Private Ledger, was overseeing around $190 million assets for UBS clients and will open Rubicon’s first Nevada office, according to Brian Russell, the RIA’s chief financial officer.

Rubicon employs 12 advisors who generally keep about 80% of the revenue they produce, he said.

Separately, UBS earlier this month lost an advisor in Connecticut who was managing $264 million in client assets to RBC Wealth Management-U.S.

Richard Cacciapaglia, who has spent his entire 21-year brokerage career with the Swiss bank-owned firm in Greenwich, joined RBC in nearby Westport, according to the U.S. unit of Royal Bank of Canada.

Cacciapaglia declined to comment, but in a prepared statement cited his appreciation of “the client-centric culture of a smaller firm.”

UBS, for its part, hired a 31-year veteran from Merrill Lynch on Thursday who works out of Greenwich and New York City. As reported in AdvisorHub, Michele McCallion was overseeing $391 million at Merrill Lynch Private Wealth Management. She had worked at Merrill since 1999.

Parker-Hansen’s move in Nevada is at least the second from UBS’s “Desert Mountain” region this summer. Michael E. Hood, who sources said produced around $700,000 in annual revenue at UBS’s Henderson, Nev., branch, joined Wells Fargo Advisors’ private client group in June.

“The continuing departures of UBS advisors is non-regrettable attrition because we aren’t paying recruiting bonuses to lure other advisors to the firm. Though this may seem counter-intuitive, we know what we’re doing, G-damn it!” – UBS Senior Management